


Iron Patterned in Parchment

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [190]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Gen, Grief, Inheritance, dying process, legacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 12:49:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16681921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: Thor's grandmother dies. She leaves him her house.





	Iron Patterned in Parchment

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: I’m totally a city person but I had to come to this tiny little town in the country because a distant relative just died and they left a house i can’t just leave there to rot. You’re the neighbor from across the street and you bring me a homemade pie and your condolences for this person i never actually met but you’re kinda cute and i might end up prolonging my stay. Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).

The house sat in a little crevice of a hill, the swell of the land stretching to a soft rise behind it. It was at the end of a lane, in a rough cul-de-sac of sorts, though there was only one other cottage in sight. The rest of the land that lay around it was wild, or so it appeared to his city eyes, anyway; to him, anything more than a tree in a median seemed remarkably for its lack of restraint. That first morning after the funeral, as he stood on the steps with a cup of tea, he realized how much effort must have been involved in keeping the place carefully tended, how many hours his grandmother must have spent hacking and pruning and planting, how much time she’d poured into the land that now lay, blooming and verdant, at his feet.

That she had died in summer was at least some sort of justice, he thought; she’d been tucked into ground ready to give new life rather than soil embittered by ice and by cold. Indeed, the aides who’d tended her and the neighbors who’d trooped by every day said that she’d spent her last weeks breathing in the spring air, then that of early summer, seemingly warmed somehow by each whiff of roses and honeysuckle, enlivened from the inside out.

He tipped his shoulder to one of the flaked and fading beams that held up the porch roof and watched the sun struggle its way over the hills, its pale light growing richer the higher it rose.

He wondered if he should call his mother. Or his father. It rankled him, still, that neither had deigned to appear.

 _Too far to fly_ , said his mother, regarding the death of her own.

 _She always hated me, anyway_ , his father had said, his tone dismissive in a way far too familiar. _She’d probably make a point of haunting me if I came_.

Despite his parents’ abdication, the house had been full for the past week with cousins, a few of his aunts, one or two of his grandmother’s London friends. But the deed was done now, she lain to rest and buried, and he was alone with her teacups and her books and her two sad, sullen cats on the land that she’d loved so well.

There was a push of tears at the back of his eyes, a wave of grief that struck him not high or hard but in a slow-building rush that brought him hard onto the stair. The stone was cold beneath his jeans, still damp with the night’s dew, and he shivered, drew his arms about himself and resolved himself not to cry.

She was in pain no longer, his granny, and for that he thanked the gods, the one he’d grown up with and the Norse ones his grandmother had always prayed to; a thread, she’d always said, that connected her to the ancients, to her parents and their parents before.

His mother had never liked it, his grandmother’s affection for these fairy stories; tales of gods bigger and stronger than the Christian god, weakened--his grandmother had told him--by his isolation, his proud assertion that it was He and only He. No, the Norse gods had been legion and fond of multiplying; argumentative and brimming with affection; covetous and crafty and united, his grandmother had said with great glee, few could defeat them.

“And the strongest among them,” she'd told him when he was small, cuddled cozily by the fire, “was called Thor.”

It wasn’t his given name, of course, but it was what she’d always called him, her voice lilting over the word in a soft Norwegian way, one that a whole lifetime spent in England had served only to contain, never to erase.

It was why they’d had such trouble finding him, the nurses aides had explained, why it had taken so long for them to get in touch. She’d kept calling for Thor in those last few weeks and all of them, accustomed to her religious eccentricities, didn’t know that it was a real person she called for rather than the old, old god himself.

He shoved the wet from his nose and downed the rest of his tea. Maybe the gods had been listening just the same because she’d waited for him, hadn’t died until he was at her side, her fragile fingers gripping his like steel.

“You need to understand, _elskling_ ,” she said, her eyes as blue as his own, “there is great love in this world for you. Don’t let your  _mor_ make you too afraid to find it. You need to look for it now.”

He’d brushed the hair from her forehead, felt the skin there like pale petal paper. “Later, _bestemor_. Now I am caring for you.”

“Pfff, nonsense. I’m dying. You, my darling, must start to live.”

“I’m happy," he said with a force that tasted bitter. "You know that. I've sent you pictures. Good job, good prospects, all that.”

“ _Tull_.” A smile, so much like herself that he wanted to weep. “Don’t you know it’s bad luck to lie when death’s in the room?”

He shook his head. “I’m not lying, I’m--”

“You are. To yourself at the very least.” She’d squeezed his hand again, iron patterned in parchment. “Please don’t go down that path any further than you already have; you’re young enough to turn back. Don’t waste your life trying to please other people, like your mother has. She’s living proof that no happiness lies that way. I want more for you in this life, _elskling_. And I know you, my Thor: given the chance for joy, you’re strong enough to grab it.”


End file.
